The pressure to ensure its network can cope with the sudden surge in data usage sparked by the COVID-19 crisis drove Vodafone to accelerate full roll-out of its virtualized digital network architecture across Europe, which has reduced its core network costs by half. The company has completed the deployment of network virtual infrastructure (NVI) using VMware’s vCloud NFV platform, enabling a single digital network architecture to underpin operations across its whole European footprint, and in 21 markets in total. The last market to go live was Albania, and Vodafone says it can now design, test and deploy new virtual network functions (VNFs) more quickly, securely and flexibly, enabling faster launch of new applications in response to market trends. Almost half…